Part 4
The Assembly, for instance, restricted the suffrage, in the hope that, by preventing workmen from voting, the victory of the Reds might be staved off. Again, the Constitution declared that no president was eligible for reëlection until he had been four years out of office. As the time for thinking of Louis Napoleon’s successor approached, the moderates of all parties urged that the Constitution be amended, so that he might be quietly reëlected,--there being no other candidate who promised to preserve order. But the factious deputies, by a narrow vote, rejected the amendment.
Napoleon now saw his chance, and openly assailed the Assembly. He posed as the champion of universal suffrage, the true representative of the people misrepresented by the factious deputies. They proposed to subject France to the uncertainties of a political campaign: his continuation in office would mean the certain maintenance of order. But Napoleon did not rely on demagogy alone: in secret he plotted a _coup d’état_.
The trade of house or bank burglar long ago fell into disrepute: not so that of the state burglar, who, if he succeed, may wear ermine jauntily,--for ermine, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. Louis Napoleon, ready to risk everything, laid his plans for stealing the government of France. The venture was less difficult than it seems, for if he could win over four or five men the odds would be with him. He must have the Prefect of Paris, the Commandant of the Garrison, the Ministers of War and of the Interior: others might make assurance double sure, but these were absolutely necessary.
Early in the spring of 1851 he set to work. Chief among his accomplices was his half brother, Morny,--a facile, audacious man, whose reputation, if he had ever had any, would have been lost long since in stock-swindling schemes; after him, in importance, came Persigny, an adventurer who had fastened on Louis Napoleon fifteen years before; Fleury, a major most active and efficient, without qualm, for he foresaw a marshal’s _bâton_; and Maupas, one of those easy villains who, never having been suspected of honesty, are spared the fatigue of pretending to be better than they are. If we assume that all these gentlemen were Imperialists for revenue only, we shall do them no injustice.
Their first move was to send Fleury to Algiers to secure a general to act as minister of war. He had not to search long; for Saint Arnaud, one of the Algerian officers, guessing Fleury’s purpose, offered his services forthwith. But Saint Arnaud stood only fifty-third in the line of promotion among French generals; some excuse must be found for passing by his fifty-two seniors. In a few weeks the French press and official gazette announced an outbreak of great violence among the Kabyles in Algeria; a little later they reported that the insurrection had been subdued by the energy of General Saint Arnaud; then, another proper interval elapsing, Saint Arnaud had come to Paris as minister of war.
It took less trouble to dismiss the Prefect of the Seine, and to substitute Maupas for him. Magnan, who commanded the troops, had already been corrupted. Half-brother Morny, at the critical moment, would appear in the Ministry of the Interior. The National Guard and the Public Printer could both be counted on,--the latter required for the prompt issuing of manifestoes. Everything being ready, the President, after some brief delays, set December 2--the anniversary of Austerlitz, and of the coronation of the great Napoleon--for committing the crime.
* * * * *
On the evening of December 1, he held his weekly reception at the Elysée; moved with his habitual courtesy among the guests; seemed less stiff than usual,--as if relieved of a burden; then went to his study for a last conference with his fellow-conspirators. The next morning Paris learned that two hundred leading citizens, military and political, including many deputies, had been arrested and taken to Vincennes. Placards declared that the President, having had news of a plot against the state, had stolen a march on the plotters, dissolved the Assembly, proclaimed universal suffrage, and called for a plebiscite to accept or reject the constitution he would frame. At first, the stupefied Parisians knew not what to do. Then the deputies who had escaped arrest met and voted to depose the President; but his gendarmes quickly broke up the meeting, and lodged the deputies in prison. Thanks to the system of centralization which France had long boasted of, Morny, from the Ministry of the Interior, controlled every prefect in France by telegraph. The provinces were informed that Paris had accepted the _coup d’état_ almost before Paris had collected her dazed senses on the morning of the 2d of December.
The chief politicians and other leaders being caged, there was no one left, except among the workingmen, to direct a resistance. They did revolt, and Napoleon and Saint Arnaud gave them free play to raise barricades, to arm and gather. Then the eighty thousand soldiers in Paris surrounded them, stormed their barricades, and made no prisoners. Accompanying this suppression of the mob was the bloodthirsty massacre of a multitude of defenseless men, women, and children who had collected on the boulevards to see the troops move against the barricaders. They were shot down in cold blood, the soldiers (according to general report) having been rendered ferocious by drink. Thus was achieved the crime of the _coup d’état_.
By this crime Napoleon had demonstrated that he had the necessary force to put down the lawless, and that he did not hesitate to use it; by massacring the innocent throng, he made the army his accomplices, against any risk of their fraternizing with the populace. A fortnight later, 7,439,000 Frenchmen ratified his crime and elected him president for ten years: only 646,000 voted against him. Napoleon the Great, by the _coup d’état_ of the 18th Brumaire, had suppressed the Directory; his imitative nephew could now point to an equally successful 2d of December.
France acquiesced all the more readily because she was put under martial law. One hundred thousand suspects were arrested, and more than ten thousand, were deported to Cayenne and Algeria. Police inquisitions, military commissions, and the other usual devices of tyranny quickly smothered resistance. Under the pretense of suppressing anarchy,--an anarchist meaning any one who did not submit to Louis Napoleon,--persecution supplanted law and justice. Had you asked to see most of the Frenchmen whose names were the most widely known, you would have been told that they were in exile.
Like his uncle, Louis Napoleon waited a little before putting on the purple. Only on December 2, 1852, the anniversary of his crime, did he have himself proclaimed emperor. The mockery of a plebiscite had preceded, and he had assured France and Europe that the “Empire means peace.”
Having reached the throne, he made the following arrangements for staying on it. He organized a Senate and a Council of State, whose members he appointed. The public were allowed to elect members to the Corps Législatif, or Legislature; but as his minions controlled the polls, only such candidates as he preferred were likely to be chosen. He suffered a few opponents to be elected, in order to have it appear that he encouraged discussion. Otherwise, he scarcely took pains to varnish his autocracy. As a deft Chinese carver incloses a tiny figure in a nest of ivory boxes, so did Bonaparte imprison the simulacrum of Liberty in the innermost compartment of the political cage in which he held France captive.
What must the condition of the French people have been that they submitted! How much antecedent incapacity for government, how much cherishing of unworthy ideals, were implied by the success of such an adventurer! And what could patriotism mean, when the French fatherland meant the land of Louis Napoleon, Morny, Maupas, Persigny, and their unspeakable underlings? The new Empire gave France what is called a strong government, by which commercially she throve. Tradesmen, seeing business improve and their hoards grow, chafed less at the loss of political freedom. The working classes were propitiated by public works--the favorite nostrum of socialists and tyrants--organized on a vast scale. Pensions were showered on old soldiers, or their widows. Taxes ran high; the public debt had constantly to be increased: but an air of opulence pervaded France.
Established at home, Napoleon now looked abroad for _gloire_. Before his elevation, some one had warned him that he would find the French a very hard people to govern. “Not at all,” he replied; “all that they need is a war every four years.” Europe had formally recognized him,--no country being more ready than England to condone his great crime. Queen Victoria, the typical British matron, exchanging visits with the Imperial adventurer made an edifying spectacle! Presently the land-greed of England and the _gloire_-thirst of France brought the sons of the Britons who had whipped the great Napoleon at Waterloo into an alliance with the sons of the Frenchmen who had there been whipped; and in the summer of 1854 British and French fleets swept through the Bosphorus and across the Black Sea, and landed two armies near Sebastopol. Of the Crimean war which ensued, we need say no more than that it was immoral in conception, blundering in execution, and ineffectual in results. Nevertheless, it supplied Napoleon III with just what he had sought. He extracted from it large quantities of _gloire_. Marshal’s _bâtons_ and military promotions, the parade of returning troops, the assembling at Paris of the European envoys who were to agree on a treaty of peace,--what did all this show but that Europe had accepted Napoleon III at his own valuation? In Russia’s wilderness of snow the great Napoleon had been ruined; now his nephew posed as the humbler of Russia. The great Napoleon had been finally crushed by England: now his nephew had enticed good, pious England into an alliance, and thereby he had surely avenged his uncle. The last European compact, humiliating to France, had been signed at Vienna: the new compact, signed at Paris, bore witness to the supremacy of France.
That year 1856 marks the acme of Napoleon the Third’s career. It saw him the recognized arbiter of Europe. The world, which worships success, forgot that the suave, impassive master of the Tuileries had been Louis the Ridiculed, a political vagabond and hapless pretender, only ten years before. Now, as arbiter, he would meddle when he chose, and the world should not gainsay him. Moreover, he believed his power so secure that he was willing to forgive those whom he had injured. He had gained what he wanted: why, therefore, should _they_ reject his amnesty?
Unscrupulously selfish till he had attained his ends, Napoleon III had, nevertheless, curious streaks of disinterestedness in his nature. What but Quixotism impelled him to promise to free Italy from her bondage to Austria? He might add thereby to his personal renown, but the French people, who must pay the bills and furnish the soldiers, were offered no adequate compensation. Whatever his motives, he crossed the Alps in the spring of 1859, joined the Piedmontese, and defeated the Austrians in two great battles. But after Solferino he paused, grew anxious, and drew back. Many reasons were hinted at: he had been horrified at the sight of twelve thousand corpses festering in the midsummer heat on the battlefield; he perceived that the campaign must last many months before the Austrians could be dislodged from the Quadrilateral; he dreaded to create in Italy a kingdom strong enough to be a menace to France; he was worried at the mobilization of the Prussian army, foreboding a war on the Rhine. Motives are usually composite: perhaps, therefore, all these, and others, made him resolve to quit Italy with his mission only half achieved. But of all his schemes, that Italian expedition has alone escaped the condemnation of posterity.
Possessing a great talent for scenic display, Napoleon dressed his victories so as to get the fullest spectacular effect from them. He could pose now as the conqueror of Austria, and offset the _gloire_ of his uncle’s Marengo with that of his own Magenta. He had more _bâtons_ and dukedoms to bestow,--more trophies to deposit in the Invalides. The gazettes, the official historians, the court writers, the spell-bound populace, acclaimed the new triumphs. Europe became too small for Imperial France to swagger in. Napoleon the First had meddled in Egypt, and Palestine, and the West Indies; his nephew must do likewise, and seek new worlds to conquer over sea.
Already, however, sober observers noted other symptoms, and soon the list of Imperial reverses grew ominously long. Early in 1860, Central Italy became a part of Victor Emanuel’s kingdom: Napoleon had insisted that it should form a new state for his cousin Plon-Plon. That autumn, Sicily and Naples united themselves to Italy: Napoleon had wished and schemed otherwise. That same year, too, England compelled him to renounce his protectorate over Syria. Then he planned a French empire in Mexico; sent French troops over under Bazaine; set up Maximilian, who appeared to have grafted Napoleonism on our continent. But in 1867 he recalled his army,--“spontaneously” as he said. The world smiled when it reflected that the spontaneity of his withdrawal had been superinduced by a curt message from the United States and the massing of United States troops on the Rio Grande. In 1864 he would have kept Prussia and Austria from robbing Denmark; but as he had only words to risk, they heeded him not. In 1866, when Prussia and Austria went to war, expecting that Austria would be the victor, he had arranged to take a slice of Rhineland while Austria took Silesia. But Prussia was victorious, and so quickly that Napoleon could not save his reputation even as mediator.
At last Europe realized that his nod was not omnipotent,--that Prussia, his enemy, could raise herself to a power of the first rank, not only without but against his sanction. Napoleon also realized that his prestige was tottering. He must have some compensation for Prussia’s aggrandizement. But when he asked for a strip of Rhineland, Bismarck replied: “I will never cede an inch of German soil.” Napoleon, not ready for war, cast about for some other screen to his humiliation; for even in his legislature men now dared to taunt him with allowing Germany to grow perilously strong. To this taunt one of the Imperial spokesmen retorted, “Germany is divided into three fragments, which will never come together.” A day or two later Bismarck published the secret treaties by which North and South Germany had bound themselves to support each other in case of attack.
Thus thwarted, Napoleon schemed to buy the tiny grandduchy of Luxemburg, which had long been garrisoned by Prussian troops. The King of Holland, who owned it, agreed to sell it for ninety million francs. Europe was willing, but Bismarck said _no_. He would consent to withdraw his troops, to destroy the fortifications, and to convert Luxemburg into a neutral state; more than that he would not allow. And with that Napoleon had to content himself, and to persuade the French--as best he could--that he had frightened the Prussians out of the grandduchy.
In 1863 Bismarck said to a friend: “From a distance, the French Empire seems to be something; near by, it is nothing.” About the same time Napoleon, who had had much friendly intercourse with the Prussian statesman, said: “M. de Bismarck is not a serious man.”
Just as the Luxemburg affair was concluded, all the world went to Paris to attend the Exposition, which was intended to be, and seemed, a symbol of the permanence of the Second Empire. The projectors knew that the immense preparations would enable the government to employ many workmen, who might otherwise be unruly, and that the vast concourse of visitors would bring money to the tradespeople and keep them from grumbling. The ostensible purpose, however, was to dazzle both Frenchmen and strangers by a view of Imperial magnificence; and it was fully achieved.
Paris herself, the Phryne among cities, astonished those who had never seen her, or who had seen her in old days. Where, they asked, were the narrow, crooked streets, in which barricaders once fortified themselves? Were these boulevards, stretching broad and straight,--were these they? And by what magic had the old, irregular dwellings been transformed into miles of tall, stately blocks? New churches, new quays, new parks, new palaces, bearing the impress of grace, symmetry, and a unifying planner, excited the wonder of the cosmopolitan throng of visitors. But the products of industry, the triumphs of the arts of peace, were not allowed to obscure the military glories of the Second Empire. A “Bridge of the Alma” and a “Boulevard of Sebastopol” kept the Crimean prowess in memory; a “Solferino Bridge” and a “Magenta Boulevard” bore witness to the Italian triumphs. And there were pageants, military, courtly, artistic; balls, at which, among the picked beauties of the world, the Empress Eugénie shone most beautiful; banquets, at which Napoleon sat at the head of the table, with monarchs at his right hand and his left deferentially listening. Little did the on-lookers suppose that the master of those magnificent revels had been lately frustrated by M. de Bismarck, who was merely one of the million whose presence in Paris seemed a tribute to Napoleon’s supremacy.
History, it is said, never repeats: but is the saying true? Is there not an old, old story of Belshazzar and the magnificent feast he gave in ancient Babylon, and the mysterious writing on the wall? And was not another Belshazzar repeating the episode in this modern Babylon less than thirty years ago? However that may be, the Exhibition of 1867 was the last triumph of Imperial France.
Imperialism had made a great show, reproducing, so far as it could, the glamour of the First Empire. Judge how potent that First Empire must have been, when mere imitation of it could thus hypnotize France and delude Europe! But Imperialism, generated by a crime and vitalized by corruption and deceit, was not _all_ France. Honest France, excluded in the beginning, could not, would not, be lured in later. Napoleon would have conciliated, but the men whom he needed to conciliate would not even parley. To offset Victor Hugo and patriots of his rigid defiance, the Emperor had the outward acquiescence of Prosper Mérimée, the worldly courtier; of Alfred de Musset, the weak-willed, debauched poet; and of such as they. But he had the conscience of France against him; to offset _that_ he leagued himself with Jesuits and Clericals. Having exhausted the expedients of force, he had tried the arts of flattery; he had intimidated, he had blandished; he had made vice easy and attractive, in order that, though he could not win over the stubborn to his cause, their character might be softened through voluptuousness. Whosoever could be corrupted--let us give him full credit--he did corrupt in masterful fashion; but conscience, in France as elsewhere, is incorruptible.
Despite his complicated machinery for gagging conscience, protests began to be made boldly. One such protest, uttered towards the end of 1868, rang throughout France; and well it might, so audacious was the eloquence of the protester. Several newspapers had opened a subscription for a monument to Baudin, a Republican killed in the _coup d’état_. The proprietors of these newspapers were arrested. One of them, Delescluze, had for his advocate Léon Gambetta, a vehement young lawyer from the South. Before the judge, and the prosecuting attorneys, and the police--all myrmidons of the Emperor--he arraigned the Empire, closing with these words: “Here for seventeen years you have been absolute masters--‘masters at discretion,’ it is your phrase--of France. Well, you have never dared to say, ‘We will celebrate--we will include among the solemn festivals of France--the Second of December as a national anniversary!’ And yet all the governments which have succeeded each other in the land have honored the day of their birth; there are but two anniversaries--the 18th Brumaire and the 2d of December--which have never been put among the solemnities of origin, because you know that, if you dared to put these, the universal conscience would disavow them!” Gambetta’s invective did not save his client from prison, but his arraignment of the Empire echoed throughout France.
And all the next year, 1869, though Imperialism abated in language none of its pretensions, it showed in deeds many signs of nervousness. No longer did it think it prudent, for instance, to abet the enormous extravagances of Hausmann, the remodeler of Paris. It even talked Liberalism, and set up a seeming Liberal Cabinet, with Ollivier at its head. “All the reform you may give us, we accept,” said Gambetta bluntly; “and we may possibly force you to yield more than you intend; but all you give, and all we take, we shall simply use as a bridge to carry us over to another form of government.” Evidently the conscience of France, expressing itself through the Republican spokesman, could not be placated or seduced.
A still blacker omen ushered in 1870. Pierre Bonaparte, the Emperor’s cousin, shot in cold blood a journalist, Victor Noir. Two hundred thousand persons followed the victim’s hearse; two hundred thousand voices shouted through the streets of Paris, “Vengeance! Down with the Empire! Long live the Republic!” In April the ministers proposed further reforms, and called for another plebiscite, that worn-out Napoleonic device for deceiving public opinion. Seven and a third million votes were dutifully registered for the Empire, and only a million and a half against it; but the Imperialists did not exult,--a majority of voters in Paris, and forty-six thousand soldiers, had voted _no_.
To be deserted by the Parisians, on whom Napoleon had lavished so much pomp,--that, indeed, was hard; but the disaffection in the army meant danger. One desperate remedy remained,--a foreign war. Victory would bring to Imperialism sufficient prestige to postpone for several years the impending collapse; meanwhile, public attention would be diverted from grievances at home.
Nemesis saw to it that rogues thus minded should not lack opportunity. The Spaniards having elected an obscure German prince to be their king, the French ministers announced that they would never suffer him to reign. Of his own motion, the German prince declined the election, but the French were not appeased. They would humble the King of Prussia by forcing from him a meek promise. King William refused to be bullied; the French ministers proclaimed that France had been insulted. Not Imperialists only, but Frenchmen of all parties clamored for satisfaction. That love of _gloire_, that mercurial vanity which, twenty years before, had made them an easy prey to Louis Napoleon, now made them abettors of his breakneck venture. He appealed to their patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel, and they were beguiled.